Why You Need To Take A Radio To This Year's Skyworks, And Not Your Phone

You need to be in sync!

8 January 2019

@dantheinternut

For this year's massive City Of Perth Australia Day Skyworks extravaganza, we're suggesting you take along a FM radio or DAB+ Digital Radio to experience the show in its synchronised best with our specially designed soundtrack.

Once again, listening to our soundtrack via the app on your phone or device sadly won't give you the optimum experience.

It's all about one word... timing.

Just through the nature of the beast, listening to us through the app already ends up with a slight delay... we're talking milliseconds.

But, on a day like Australia Day, where hundreds of thousands of people are all trying to listen to the same thing at the same time, that delay can become enormous, simply because the infrastructure can't cope with the demand.

We went to our technical guru here at the station,Marc Eddy, who explained it like so:

"In technical terms, the delay on your phone is due to the process it takes to mount the stream audio and then for your phone to decode it. It’s actually around 30-40 seconds (best case scenario). But depending on your handset speed, cellular coverage, wifi speed, buffering etc – they are all variables on why the audio coming out of your phone might be a different time to the person sitting next to you."

What does all this mean..? Essentially, the app feed on the day is most likely to experience a huge delay, and that listening to us via a FM or DAB+ Digital radio will give you the synchronised experience that takes the show to the next level.

If you can't dig up a retro FM radio, there is another option. The City of Perth will have run a massive line of speakers down the length of Riverside Drive.